No Country for Two Kings

Dear Friends,

Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve written a Christmas poem? Maybe 20 years. I have been afraid, I think. Because the last one (“Let the Stable Still Astonish”) ended up around the world in books, cards, church programs, chorales … (By God’s work and grace, truly.) How could such words ever be found again? I have tried, but nothing. And nothing.

Until this year, this week. I send this out with trembling open hands, hoping it serves someone this holy season.

Here’s the artist’s website: 

And—-here’s the poem as plain text rather than an image:

No Country for Two Kings

A king is come. There is no bed

in hostel or hearth for a girl

bursting with child. No bed for a birth

and less room for a king, no matter how infant

and Hebrew he is, no matter how long

the signs of his coming. See,

there he lies among dung and black sheep

in a two-mule town:

This is no place for a king.

But Herod hears. When you’re the solo royal

any rumor of a rival is good enough

to make the mad exchange:

1000 babies dying for his crown,

1000 mothers wailing grief

for his relief.

This is no country for two kings.

And when that child grows up crude

with tools and wood, yet dares to rule

over sickness, greed and fear,

he wins a timber throne, is crowned

with thorns and irony--

the signs are clear:

This is how kings are kept,

how man redeems:

Yes, let all the children die for me.

While the other lifts his bleeding crown,

Let me die to make my children royalty.

-----Leslie Leyland Fields